Page 76 of Love Thy Brother
Sighing, I faced Cam and started to talk, starting at the beginning and ending with the icy dip that had led me to River’s bed, though I kept that juicy nugget to myself. Cam didn’t need that information. No one did. It was all mine.
I finished up and sat back in my seat, absorbing the reactions around me. The anger. The worry. The visceral freak out that drove Saint from his seat and out of the building.
I winced as the door thunked shut behind him. “Damn, maybe I should’ve left out the swimming part.”
Mateo lit a cigarette and stood to guide the smoke away from Embry. “He’d find out eventually.”
I accepted that truth and braced myself for Cam’s fury instead. Business was business, but coming for River? For his flesh and blood? He’d been hopping mad about it before. Now I was waiting for him to slam a bat on the table and ride out for these fuckers.
He did neither. Yet. Just stared me down, dark eyes that were everything and nothing like River’s skewering me across the table. “This happened last night?”
“Yup.”
“You get a registration?”
“Nope. Wouldn’t matter if I had. Bound to be twocced, unless these yuppies are fuckwitted enough to pull this shit in their company motors.”
Cam’s glower intensified. “What if it wasn’t them?”
“Who else would it be?”
“Maybe whoever’s running K and blow into Porth Luck these days. You tossed their dealer in the sea the first night you were there.”
It was my turn to glare. “That was weeks ago. How the fuck do you know about it?”
“River told me six seconds after you did it. Spoiling his fun makes him chatty.”
That was new information. Not that I’d upset River’s fucked-up idea of a good time, but that he’d gone running to Cam to moan about it when he hadn’t mentioned it to my face. “I have no regrets. Scumbag was selling county lines shite, probably cut with fucking rat poison. You want that going up your brother’s nose?”
“I don’t want my brother sniffing anything.”
“Good. Well, he hasn’t for a while, as far as I know. And I haven’t seen the swimming road boy since.”
“But you think it’s a coincidence you ended up in the drink too?”
I hadn’t thought about it at all, but as the implications of Cam’s theory sank in, the possibility that he was right was hard to discount. “So, if it wasn’t these property dickstains, I’ve started a war with someone else?”
“Maybe.” Cam sat back in his seat. “And it’s the last thing any of us need, but if hurling that little cunt in the ocean stopped River getting high for one fucking night, I’m here for it. Can’t speak for anyone else, though.”
He glanced around the table. Embry first, then Mateo, Nash, Decoy, and Alexei, who placed his elbows on the table and speared me with a keen stare. “Old one, what is this county lines you speak of? I have heard you all say it before, but it is not a phrase I fully understand.”
“It’s how product is distributed in areas that haven’t been claimed by bigger fish,” I explained when no one else stepped up to help me out. “Gangs from other cities send kids in on the trains to deliver re-ups to road boys on the ground.”
“Small operations, then?”
“Depends how you look at it.” I pinched Mateo’s cigarette box and pilfered the joint stuffed in the bottom. Lit it and treated myself to a sweet lungful of herbal smoke. “One kid with one package ain’t a lot, but if you’re sending a dozen of them into the same amount of small towns, it’s big business.”
Alexei digested that and looked to Cam. “Who would be targeting Porth Luck? Are they here, in Whitness, too?”
“Not here,” Cam said. “At least not in any quantity. The club is too visible for anyone to have the stones. But as for Porth Luck, I couldn’t say. Since we pulled out and ran off Sambini, it’s been wild down there. Open market for the first time in decades. If I was running a distribution network from London, I’d exploit it too.”
“It’s no one big.” Nash spoke for the first time. “We’d know if it was.”
Alexei cocked his head. “Are you sure about that? It is not your business to know these things anymore.”
“Doesn’t mean we don’t pay attention.” Nash eyed Decoy, who was getting ready to leave. “Sambini moves through Ireland now, but they still claim every scrap of territory we’re giving up as the haulage firm expands. It makes more sense that whoever it is doesn’t know who they might be fucking with if someone important decides they give a shit.”
That was my Nashie. Level-headed and logical.
